Small boy; big eel. It’s still embedded in my memory. Size matters. That is why I remember the eel but forget the clock-tower. The clock-tower in my home-town is small and gets lost against the nearby Odeon that has now been transformed into a Waitrose. It was erected by public subscription to mark belatedly the coronation of Edward VII. That was a time when the Empire was at its zenith and the Commonwealth was being invented. We now see the Commonwealth becoming dismantled. The day of such memorials has passed.
That’s the way the world goes. If you’re too big to fail, you don’t fail. One favour deserves another. You scratch my back and I’lll scratch yours. We’ve probably heard reports on the Radio Four consumers’ programme of the cunning that goes into telephone calls to vulnerable people to get them to part with their savings. This is an extra in a society where all that matters is the bottom line.
‘Never give a sucker an even break,’ said W.C. Fields. ‘Caveat emptor,’ wat the polite expression of this (Let the buyer beware). The seller should be merciless. It’s up to the buyer to have his wits about him.
We hurriedly turn the pages to find something in the Bible that is a bit more, shall we say, reasonable. I’m sure Jesus had a look in his eye when he talked about this. He could see what kind of impression he was making. ‘Not good enough,’ says Jesus. Exchange of favours gets us nowhere. Doing a deal is a necessary part of a business, whether it is a corner-shop or department-store. This may have been OK for former generations but we need to do better today.
Such is the scope of the change Jesus envisages that we quail. We turn in from the world at large to the small community who take heed to Jesus’ teaching. Much of the Sermon on the Mount deals with an update of our behaviour patterns.
Probably everyone has seen, as I once did, a massive conger eel gracing a market stall in a street market. But big is not always best. The measure that matters, as we read the Sermon on the Mount, is unlimited goodness. |Our generosity is to be measured by what we give to those we scarcely know. What we give to our friends is no more than to be expected.
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